Report: Baltimore’s War on Guns Almost Exclusively Targeted Black Neighborhoods

A report published in the New York Times claims that Baltimore’s war on guns is almost exclusively conducted in black neighborhoods.

The report, written by Baynard Woods and Brandon Soderberg, says: “The war on guns, like the war on drugs, is primarily waged on poor people by small operations units that drive around in unmarked cars looking for trouble.” And the “poor people” being targeted in Baltimore are black people.

Woods and Soderberg claim the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force is doing the targeting; that they “called jump-out boys or knockers, and they do not respond to citizen calls.” Rather, they move undercover in the night, busting through doors to seize firearms in black neighborhoods.

They write:

Right-wing fears about people kicking in the doors of wealthy white gun owners to take away their arms might seem laughable. But that is precisely the kind of thing the task force was doing to the mostly black citizens of Baltimore. And when progressives call for gun control in a city where many of the guns are already illegal, they are calling either for tougher penalties or for more squads like the task force.

Woods and Soderberg are concerned that current Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison is as committed to continuing the tactics of the Gun Trace Task Force as his predecessors. They quote him responding to recent shootings by saying, ““We’ve recovered 11 guns in 11 arrests over the weekend, over the past 48 hours.

So we are going after those people who are illegally carrying guns; we are arresting them.” They worry this means residents in Baltimore’s black neighborhoods will continue to be targets of undercover task force members who roam the streets and byways during the night.